Bornon the 19th of November, 1831, reared amid the humblest
surroundings on the frontier of Western progress, heLivedto rise by his own efforts from poverty and obscurity to the
most exalted station that can be attained on earth,--

"The pillar of a people’s hope,
The centre of a world’s desire,"—

and to illustrate in his own career the noblest possibilities of
INTEGRITY, PERSEVERANCE, COURAGE, AND GENIUS,
fostered by the free institutions of "a government
of the people, by the people, and for the people."Assassinatedon the Second day of July, 1881, he endured with Christian
resignation and heroic fortitude the cruelest pangs of
mortal suffering, lingering eighty days in the
dark Valley of the Shadow of Death, andDiedon the 19th day of September, 1881, in the hushed presence
of a Nation of Fifty Millions, with the sorrowful
sympathy of all civilized mankind--A Martyrto the FIERCENESS OF FACTIONAL POLITICS and the victim
of that accursed greed for the SPOILS OF OFFICE which
was the bane of his brief conscious existence as
President, and is the gravest peril that
threatens the future of his country.

In every public position this earnest Christian, this patriotic Sol-
dier, this enlightened Statesman, this faithful Executive,

"Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off."

"Fellow Citizens! Clouds and darkness are ‘round about Him! His pavilion
is dark waters
"and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment
of His throne! Mercy
"and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens, God reigns, and the
Government at Washing-
"ton still lives!"--- JAMES A. GARFIELD, on the assassination
of President LINCOLN.

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James A. Garfield was born and raised in Ohio. Only one year after his graduation from Williams College in North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1856 he was named president of Hiram College in Ohio. He was devoutly religious. He served in the Civil War, reaching the rank of Major General. During the war he was elected to the House of Representatives and eventually became a leader there. In 1880 he was named a senator from Ohio, but months later the Republican National Convention named him its candidate for president. He won the presidency with a narrow margin in the popular vote. But soon after, religious fanatic and disappointed office seeker Charles Guiteau (looking, as the flyer says, for "the spoils of office"), shot him in the back. He lingered for more than two months before dying. His career earned him a hero's funeral.